The Only Way To Spend Valentine's Day
by Caz Malfoy
Summary: Tony and Loki were planning on celebrating Valentine's Day the same way they always did.


**Title**: The Only Way To Spend Valentine's Day  
**Rating**: Teen  
**Fandom**: Iron Man/The Avengers/Thor  
**Pairing**: Tony Stark/Loki Odinson (Pre-Slash)  
**Summary**: Tony and Loki were planning on celebrating Valentine's Day the same way they always did.  
**Author's Note**: I've been reading a lot of High School AU's recently where Tony is Thor's friend and he decides to befriend Loki. I thought I'd do my own spin on it, only where they were friends from the start and had always been close.

This is a companion to my story 'Ten Years', but can be read as a stand-alone.

x

"It's Valentine's Day."

Seventeen-year old Tony Stark paused at the words and looked up, his right hand stilling over his math homework. His left hand was suspended halfway to his mouth and cereal was dangerously close to falling back into the bowl.

He raised an eyebrow and quirked a smirk. "Gee, Bruce, I like you and everything, but don't you think that's a little inappropriate? I mean, imagine what Jarvis would say."

His older brother rolled his eyes and threw a slice of toast at Tony, laughing loudly when it hit the spoon and sent the utensil clattering into the bowl and coming dangerously close to splashing Tony's almost completed homework. "I was going to ask if you were planning on asking anyone out on a date today," he said, taking a small sip of his orange juice.

Tony shrugged his shoulders. "I've never asked anyone out on Valentine's Day," he replied, picking his spoon back up and shovelling cereal into his mouth. "I usually end up with a bunch of cards shoved into my locker, though. Me and Loki usually spend the night laughing over the ridiculous poems," he added with another small shrug.

Bruce didn't say anything for a moment, and when he looked up from his homework again, Tony saw that his brother was wearing a strange expression on his face. "What about Loki?" the older boy asked, his tone too suspiciously light to be accidental.

Tony frowned deeply. "What about him?"

The college student huffed and turned away from Tony, throwing his hands up in exasperation; although what Bruce was exasperated about, Tony had no idea. "Do you think he'll be asking anyone out?" he elaborated, turning and leaning back against the counter.

At his words, Tony snorted with laughter and shook his head. "I doubt it," he muttered, finishing off the last question on his homework and stuffing the paper into his backpack. "He thinks Valentines is as stupid as I do." He glanced at his watch and winced. "I've gotta go. Loki gets pissy if I'm late picking him up; he has this weird thing about needing to be on time for everything."

Before Bruce could ever register that Tony had even moved, he had left the kitchen, seconds before the front door opened and closed with a bang.

"He's going to realise what you're doing one day," Jarvis' voice warned from the doorway that led to the dining room and Bruce turned to see his father looking at him with an amused expression on his face.

"Good," the younger man muttered darkly, picking Tony's bowl up from where it had been left of the counter. "They've been in love with each other for as long as I can remember. It's about time one of them realised that they're already dating."

Jarvis rolled his eyes and headed further into the room, placing his own cup in the dishwasher. "Don't push them together too hard," he advised his son softly. "They're both intelligent; they'll figure it out eventually."

x

Later that night, Tony was lying with his feet on Loki's headboard, resting his chin against a pillow as he stared at his best friend with pitiful brown eyes. "I can't believe you're doing your homework. It's not due until next Friday," he added, pouting at the other teenager.

Loki didn't even look up as he answered, "We can't all be geniuses, Tony."

Tony huffed and buried his face in the pillow. He was bored and had been expecting their usual ritual of making fun of their valentine's cards. Instead, Loki had sat himself at his desk and given Tony strict orders that he wasn't to interrupt until he was at least halfway through his history project.

Knowing that it was pointless to try and convince his best friend to ignore his school work for one evening, Tony wisely stayed silent and tried to find something else to occupy himself with. Without looking, he reached under the bed and felt around for moment until his fingers touched on a smooth binder.

Loki didn't even look up as Tony shifted into an upright position and flicked the folder open. It was a collection of all Loki's achievements from Pre-Kindergarten, through to the week before when the nerd had been crowned 'Most likely to become a comic book villain' by the rest of their friends (Natasha had even gone so far as to make a certificate for him).

At the back of the folder were Loki's more personal documents and Tony hesitated, before shaking his head and rolling his eyes. He was one of only a handful of people to see the documents in front of him and he knew that Loki didn't care that Tony was looking at them now.

Confirmation of Loki's adoption had been given to him when they'd been thirteen and the young genius had received a distraught telephone call not long after. As he looked through the papers, Tony found himself remembering how he had hugged Loki all night as he tried to convince him that it made no difference if he wasn't related to the Odinson's by blood; they were his family regardless, just like Bruce and Jarvis were Tony's.

Once Loki had gotten over the initial shock and admitted that Tony was right – well, he never actually said it _out loud _but Tony liked to think it was implied that Loki thought he was amazing – they had started trying to find his birth parents based on the little information he'd been given, but it had been a closed adoption so finding information had been slow going.

Tony had even offered to hack into the adoption databases, but Loki had flat out turned him down. He had ordered the brunet to not do anything that would likely get them arrested before they'd even graduated high school.

"Interesting reading?" Loki's voice asked from right beside Tony's head, making him jump and slam the binder closed guiltily.

Loki chuckled at the startled look on his best friend's place as he dropped to the mattress beside Tony. He reached out and opened the binder, looking down at the page Tony had been looking at. "I don't think I'm ever going to find out who they were," he murmured, running his fingers over the official papers Tony had been reading.

"I thought you were doing your homework," Tony asked, moving Loki's hand out of the way and closing the binder, not wanting to linger on the fact of his adoption when he knew that Loki didn't like talking about it.

The darker haired teenager rolled his eyes and slid the binder back where Tony had found it under the bed. "I've done over half of it, like I said I was going to," Loki told him, getting off the bed and heading over to where they had dumped their backpacks in the corner of the room.

"Can we make fun of people now?" Tony asked, sitting up straight as his eyes lit up with excitement.

Loki laughed and nodded his head, dumping the bags beside Tony of the bed. "I think I've got more cards than you this year," he mused, heading over to his desk and grabbing the bag of popcorn they'd been saving.

Tony scoffed and tipped his backpack open, spilling pink and red envelopes all across the black bedspread. "You wish," he muttered, tearing the popcorn open and throwing a handful at his best friend.

Loki growled and smacked Tony on the back of the head, before he settled on the bed and reached for the first envelope from his best friend's pile. "Isn't this from Natasha?" he asked, studying the handwriting on the front.

"I doubt it," Tony argued, grabbing the envelope and scrutinising the script. "Looks more like Darcy's writing."

Together, they began tearing random envelopes open, laughing and making fun of each other more and more with each card that was opened. Every time Loki opened an envelope and almost fell off the bed laughing, Tony found himself grinning and thinking about Bruce's comments earlier.

He might not have a date for Valentine's Day, but celebrating in their own way with Loki was better than anything else he could be doing.

The End


End file.
